Starting From The Bottom

Hi. How are you? Where do I begin? Where do I begin? Where.do.I.Begin? *raps fingers on keyboard* Okay lets just start from the beginning shall we?

Hi. I’m Will and I am an introvert. There I said it. It is out there for the world to know. Not only am I an introvert but I am black as well. Might as well double down while I am at it. Okay so how did we get to this point? I am not really sure. I just know growing up I was,and still, shy and felt comfortable being by myself. I was cool with being left alone to my own devices. Yes people, there is a difference between being alone and being lonely. I have never felt lonely but there are plenty of times that I want to be and actively seek to be alone.

Okay, back to my story. Sidenote; I get distracted very easily and I write as if we are having a conversation and not as if you are reading my Masters course dissertation so there may be times when I venture off into a totally different story in the middle of a current story. It will work back to the original somehow someway. Trust me. Uggh see I did it again. Let me start over…

Okay so back to my story. Growing up as an introvert is not the easiest thing to do. Maybe now that there is a label for it but not when I was a young black boy growing up. Especially as a young black boy growing up in the south. Okay, so I spent the first half of my life in DC/Maryland and I loved it. Due to some family issues that I may or may not get into later, I don’t know you guys like that, when I was in 5th grade I moved to the south. More specifically South Carolina. I was familiar with the area since I would visit family there every summer but we all know visiting someplace and living there are two totally different and separate things. Anyway, they were aware of my ‘shyness’, as it was called back then, but not really the extent of it. I went from living in the hustle and bustle of the city where I could escape into a corner and observe all the happenings that was going on unnoticed to the country where there was no escaping anything. Not to mention I was the new kid with the funny accent so they would ask me a million and one questions about where I was from, why I talked like that (more about that later), who I was related to and so on and so forth. Mind you, I didn’t have the answer to any of these questions and just wanted to be left alone to my books or games or whatever else didn’t involve social activities.

This seems like it is getting a little long in the tooth. Long story short. Come along with me on this journey as we discover and revel in the world of being black and being an introvert.